Electra (31 page)

We rode into Delphi, supporting him between us, and the Delphians flocked out to see the Prince of Mycenae, stained with blood-guilt. We had many helpers to lead Orestes up the holy mountain.

There the priests took him from us, and Pylades and I went to his house.

The slaves had done well in the master's absence. Lysane greeted us. Tauros grabbed my hand and shook it to reprove me for leaving him, almost knocking me down with his joy. Graios and Aulos lit a huge fire to announce our return and Abantos, grinning twice in one hour, made lentil soup and honeycakes. The boy Azeus had grown. He was almost as tall as me and greedier than ever. Clonius reported that the house was secure and listed increases in flocks and herds, cloth made, olives gathered and travellers lodged.

One of them had lain with Alceste, and she was pregnant. He had fallen in love with her, and she with him. He wanted to buy her at twice what Pylades had paid, and my Lord agreed, letting the girl take all her clothes and household tools with her, not just the spindle and distaff to which a female slave is entitled. I thought this generous and just, and Alceste was delighted, kissing his feet.

But Pylades went early to his own bed and did not summon me. I slept cold without him. Now that I knew what love meant, I wondered if he had loved Alceste, and whether he had rather been lying with a willing slave than a frightened wife.

I did not know how to ask him. The next morning we were summoned to the temple and we went, to meet a very old priest who had bad news.

'Apollo cannot prevail against them,' he said. 'Though he has given Orestes a divine gift. The bow of horn may keep them back, and he has a guardian in the black dog. Phoebus has bestowed clear sight on her, so she can warn him. But you must go north, Prince Pylades. North to Olympus, home of the Gods. There Orestes will be judged.'

'How can we hope to make that long journey with my brother so weak, so tortured? He will…'

I could not complete the sentence, but Pylades could.

'He will die before we get to the mountains,' he told the old man.

'Phoebus Apollo promises help,' he replied. 'Unlooked for, on the road. You need only begin the journey, and ask at every temple of the Bright One for ways to ward off the hags.'

They brought Orestes. At least he was walking. And as the Furies could not attack him in Apollo's temple, the bruises had faded and he was healthier. But there was no personage behind those blind golden eyes. He seemed empty, like a shining shell when the mussel has been eaten.

Nevertheless, there was nothing else to be done but to attempt the journey. Pylades and I shut up the house again, leaving Clonius and Lysane in charge. Abantos, scowling, made traveller's bread and parched corn for our journey. When I was leaving, he muttered 'This house will be hollow without its Lady.'

I was touched, and promised to return with new recipes. Then I told Lysane that I was Pylades' wife, and she scattered pollen over me, praying to Demeter the Mother for blessings on a fertile womb.

'No, I will not bear,' I said, and told her why. She scanned my face, saw something there and kissed me.

'In time,' she said.

We had a litter built; a light one which could be folded if not needed, and took a pack-horse to carry it. While Orestes could ride like a man, we would not affront him by making him travel like a woman. But I suspected that it might come to that, in the end.

We left Delphi in gloom, presaging drizzle, a bad day to begin a long journey. It would take us a month, perhaps, to reach the mountains. As I turned for a last look at the little house where, I now realised, I had been happy, it began to rain.

Through Amphissa to Bralos; Bralos to Lamia, where we lay in the temple to give Orestes some sleep. There the priests shaved his head to buy off the hags with his hair, and we dragged the poor lolling scarecrow another three towns along before they caught up again. Lamia to Domokos, through rich, wet farmland, and round the foot of a mountain to Farsala.

In that city they bathed him in the blood of pigs. Seven pigs yielded enough blood to fill a pool, and they dipped him, witless and slack, seven times under the clotting tide. I could not watch as the birthing, naked head broke through the blood.

I had seen that before.

A week, this time, before the dreams began again. The weather had turned from wet to cold to icy, so that we had woken one morning in our camp and felt our coverings crackle with frost.

All that time he mumbled or whimpered, but he did not talk. I dosed him with the Corinthian potion twice a day, but it did him no good. We had to feed him like a baby and tend him like an untrained child, and my heart was torn. To be killed in battle, yes, that could happen; to die instantly between one breath and the next, ripped out of life would be tragic perhaps, but nothing compared to this slow disintegration into death.

I did not believe the God. I did not think we would get him alive to Olympus to be judged.

I had been wrong. Platikambos was not a nice town. In fact, it was neither nice nor a town. It was a collection of badly made dung-and-mud huts in flat clay fields. The inhabitants shared with their landscape the virtues of immobility, inflexibility and tedium.

Apollo's promise, however, held me there. I was about to quarrel fiercely with Chryse, who was already uneasy, when a fortunate outbreak of a virulent skin disease sent us off in search of suitable herbs and gave rise to a refreshing argument on the relative merits of a marshleaf, milk and sungold lotion as opposed to a mallow, milk and Apollo's flower, which was only resolved after we realised, as was often the case, that we were talking about the same herbs.

Then we spent the time compounding and applying it to the sullen villagers and their unpleasant offspring, whom we also treated for lice, fleas, ringworm, blains, cankers and unhealing sores, largely due to their repugnance for water in any form.

Eumides left us to it and went hunting, returning at the end of every day with some sort of prey - once a string of shining river-fishes - and a bunch of whatever we'd asked him to find.

On the last day he came in with four rabbits and a tunic full of mentha and lychnis, saying 'There is someone coming along the road.'

'They'll be sorry,' said Chryse, grinning. He knew that we were leaving tomorrow.

'I think there's something wrong with one of them. He is swaying in the saddle; the others are holding him up. And you'll never guess, friends, who they are.'

We ran through a few possibilities, including a particularly unlikely one that Menelaus was bringing Elene home. We couldn't guess, so we went out to see.

The travellers looked muddy and worn. Their horses were plodding, as though they had come a long way, heads down.

As they neared us I said, 'Greetings and welcome to Platikambos. The local diseases are not infectious. We are healers. Can we help you? Your comrade looks ill.'

A figure dropped from the saddle into Eumides' arms. He bore him up gently while the others dismounted stiffly, groaning. The woman pulled back her veil.

It was Electra. A different Electra. Gone was the shrinking maiden. This was a woman. Hard experience and grief had carved lines in her face, but she looked me in the eye and spoke to me like another human, instead of the condescending tone she had adopted with the escaped barbarian slave.

'Lady Cassandra, you remember me, Electra; and this is my husband Pylades. Orestes is tormented by the Erinyes, the revengers. They come every night to him. Apollo says that we have to get him to Olympus to be judged. I don't think he is going to last that long.' There were real tears in those once-stony eyes.

Eumides had already carried the boy into the house and laid him down on his cloak. 'Oh, Orestes, my friend,' he sighed, as I brought a light and we examined him.

The face was skeletal, the eyes hollow, the head covered with a shock of dark hair. I would not have known him from the ten-year-old we had met so long ago. The gaunt hand was still wearing Eumides' ring. The sailor stroked the tormented face, and the eyes opened.

I exclaimed and nearly dropped the lamp. Chryse said sternly, 'What have you been giving him?'

The boy's eyes were blind, the pupils no broader than a pin's point. He was drugged with poppy, that was clear, but it must have been a massive dose. Electra produced a sealed jar.

I took off the lid and sniffed, passing it to Diomenes. 'Extract of poppy in wine. Where did you get this?' he demanded.

'The priests at Corinth. They said to give him half a measure twice a day,' faltered Electra.

Chryse called upon some Gods in whom he did not believe, including Asclepius.

'They wanted to keep him quiet,' I suggested to my incandescent colleague. 'I would prescribe a cleansing draught. Can we venture black-leaf berry?'

'We must,' he said. 'He'll die if we don't.'

'He might die if we do,' I reminded him. Male healers have a liking for heroic measures. Eumides raised his head and snapped, 'Stop quarrelling and do something!'

'He's poisoned,' said Chryse. 'His breathing is suppressed, there is no flow of urine, is there? When I press on his bladder? Look at the swelling of the abdomen, the yellow tinge to the skin. It's black-leaf berry or he won't last the night.'

'Nothing else for it,' I agreed. 'I saw some growing near the village well and cut down the bush myself, the children might have eaten it. I'll go.

'Oh, your pardon,' I added to the travellers, who were still standing, amazed. 'Sit down, please, the villagers will bring food and tend your horses, it will relieve them of obligation to pay us for healing them.'

And thank you, Apollo, I thought as I sloshed out into the mud to find a handful of poisonous black-leaf berries. This was the task, this was his bargain. Get Orestes alive to the mountain, and he'll tell someone where we can find a home.

I looked up into the cloudy drizzle and made a private vow that if this didn't work, if it was some trick, I would form a group and sail to where no one had ever heard of Apollo the Bright One, Sun-God, Archer.

We made the infusion together. We always did this when there was some danger that the patient might die, so that we could not blame ourselves or the other physician for failing to save them. Chryse crushed the berries and I heated the water and the honey which was to dilute them.

'Three berries are enough,' I said.

'Four. He has been dosed with a near-fatal draught of black poppy every day for more than three weeks. If we manage to drag him back from Thanatos' clutches I'll… I'll start believing in Gods.'

Electra and Pylades had shed their outer garments in the warmth of the little house. They had washed some of the grime off and were seated either side of Orestes, watching him breathing. Electra was stricken with guilt that she had been administering a toxic potion to someone she loved. I left her to Chryse and smiled at the tall husband, Pylades of Phocis. A handsome man and clearly devoted to the Lady.

'I am Cassandra, healer of Troy and now of Achaea,' I said. 'My companions are Eumides the sailor and Chryse Diomenes, healer of Asclepius, from Epidavros. How came you here, Lord? Were you looking for a healer?'

He smiled, an anxious smile which did not reach his sombre brown eyes. 'No, but by the favour of the Gods I have found two healers.'

'If this works, it will take a few hours,' I said, as Chryse dripped the infusion into Orestes' mouth. He swallowed, which argued some chance. When the swallowing muscles are paralysed the patient must die.

Chryse laid the head gently down on the rolled cloak - I loved to watch the tenderness with which he handled those in his care - and said, 'Well, there is nothing to do but watch and wait. Eumides, perhaps you can cook those rabbits. And who have we here?'

Racer nosed her way into the hut, sniffed suspiciously at Orestes to make sure he was uninjured, then sat down at his feet. The journey had been hard for her. We travelled so long every day that she did not have much time for hunting. Her ribs were showing and her pads were dropping blood on Orestes' cloak.

'A faithful creature,' said Eumides. 'She will have rabbit. We can have the fish, I'll grill them the way you like them, Cassandra, Chryse.' Then he enticed the bitch away from the garments and gave her a rabbit, which vanished in four bites.

It took her longer to eat the other three, and then she lay down with an almost human sigh to lick her paws. She even allowed Eumides to examine her feet, something which she would not tolerate from either Pylades or me.

Cassandra had changed. The golden-haired woman with the grey eyes was less careless, more serious, more beautiful than I remembered her.

They were all three beautiful. There was a fullness, soft and robust, to Cassandra's body; her movements were quick but a little rough. Those of Diomenes were smoother and gentler, as he dropped a possibly death-dealing potion into Orestes' mouth. Even Eumides, with his curly hair and brown face and glinting earrings, seemed attractive in that house in muddy Platikambos, where we sat and ate grilled fish in the warmth and the light, waiting to see if Orestes, my son, would live.

'If you let him die,' hissed Hecate to Apollo, 'and rob me of my revenge-'

'Aged Sister, I thought that you wanted him to die,' said Apollo innocently.

'If he dies he will leave my realm. Hades shall have him and Hades is Lord Father Zeus' brother, and could be influenced to release the matricide.'

'What, then, is your will, Queen of Darkness?'

'I want him to live,' she snarled, and all her snakes hissed. Venom dripped on the marble floor.

'Well, I have sent him healers, because so do I,' smiled Apollo.

The time went past, as time does. The healers told us to sleep, promising to wake us as soon as anything happened. But I could not sleep, and Pylades would not leave me, so we leaned together in a corner of the little house, wrapped in the same cloak.

'Tell me, Lord,' asked Eumides, 'how came the child to this pass? I left him in your care.'